Satwant Singh (left) and Beant Singh: part of a deep-rooted conspiracy

This is the off-season at Vigyan Bhavan and the capital's massive convention centre generally wears a deserted look. Except for the adjoining office complex, the Vigyan Bhavan Annexe, where there is unusual activity. On the two top floors, sentries, clutching bayoneted rifles, tensely confront visitors. Access is through a metal detector arch.

The security, officials say, has to be extremely tight here, for the two floors house the headquarters of the two most sensitive commissions of inquiry in the country's recent history: the Justice M.P. Thakkar Commission and the Anand Ram Commission inquiring into the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi, to fix responsibility for the security lapses that led to it and to determine whether the murder was the result of the vengefulness of a few Sikhs in Mrs Gandhi's security setup or had its genesis in a conspiracy.

Some answers to these questions were expected to surface last fortnight as Justice Thakkar submitted his final report to the Government within a few days of the extension of the term of his commission by a year. But as senior officials scrutinised the report, it became clear that the commission had refused to answer most of the key questions. Said a Home Ministry official: "The report is full of references to security failure, carelessness and even suggestion as to who could have been responsible for all this. Beyond that, there is nothing substantial. It does not fix responsibility and does not deal with the issue of conspiracy."

But even while hedging his bets on this, the most crucial question of all. Thakkar has made some remarkably candid observations on the issue of security lapses that led to the assassination. Thakkar, who examined over 200 witnesses besides studying hundreds of pages of official records and analysing the VVIP security manuals and instructions issued by the security officials from time to time, traces in detail the sequence of events on the morning of October 31, 1984. The commission has established that:

In violation of all security norms, personnel in the prime minister's security staff were frequently able to make mutual exchange of duty shifts.

The whole security system round the prime minister was structured in such an amorphous manner that it was impossible to hold any one person accountable for her protection. This particularly applied to Ram Nath Kao, virtually her most influential security advisor, who had a lot of power with "no accountability at all".

There were frequent and serious differences of opinion between the Intelligence Bureau and the Delhi police, the two agencies mainly looking after the prime minister's security, leading to lack of coordination.

The Thakkar Commission has raised more questions than it has answered. It has added a whole new dimension by suggesting that the assassins could have had backers within the prime minister's inner circle.

In the reconstructions of the hazy sequence of events on the morning of October 31, the commission has unearthed a startling find. It seems that on that fateful morning, Mrs Gandhi's proposed interview with Peter Ustinov was delayed by half-an-hour for apparently inexplicable reasons. This crucial 30-minute period coincided with a hurried visit to the toilet by both Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. "That could have been out of a bout of nerves or to sort out some last-minute detail of coordination," said a commission official. But from this the judge has inferred that, but for the last-minute change in the prime minister's schedule, she could have safely walked past the gate for her interview with Ustinov, with her would-be assassins locked up in the toilet.

It is apparent that the commission is not prepared to blame this entirely on providence and it is this factor which compelled the commission to search hard for likely accomplices of the assassins within the inner sanctum of 1, Safdarjang Road with the burden of suspicion inevitably falling on R.K. Dhawan, the powerful personal aide who had accompanied Mrs Gandhi through a decade of fluctuating fortunes. Besides, the commission suspected him of being careless in not getting the right import of Mrs Gandhi's insistence on retaining the Sikh guards in her security staff. According to the commission's view, Dhawan failed to ensure that while these guards were posted to maintain the Government's secular image, they should not be allowed to get close to the prime minister "particularly when it was being openly said at two gurudwaras in Delhi that Mrs Gandhi will be killed by her own security guards". While the judge squarely blames the Delhi police for not sensing this mood at the gurudwaras correctly, the main suspicion falls on Dhawan, now living in virtual retirement. This led to the lengthy exchange of notes and letters dutifully leaked out to reporters.

The commission's concentration on Dhawan was largely the result of rumours that he had been feeling insecure for a few months because of reports that Mrs Gandhi was planning to sack him. In fact in one of the notes the commission pointedly asked Dhawan if. at any time in the 1983-84 period, Mrs Gandhi had shown any lack of confidence or displeasure with him. Dhawan denied all this and then firmly refused to accept the commission's suggestion for taking the polygraph (lie-detector) test. To begin with, he raised technical questions about the nature of the test and later conveyed to the commission that it could result in his coming out with secrets he had become privy to during his days close to Mrs Gandhi and that "many of these may not be fitting to the memory of the late prime minister."

Dhawan refused the lie-detector test by conveying to the commission that it could result in his coming out with secrets and that many of these may not be fitting to the memory of the late prime minister.

The commission, however, spent much time in examining Dhawan's conduct and closely questioned a number of officials, including Mrs Gandhi's then personal security officer D.K. Bhat, who had been sent on a punishment posting to the Andamans. And even though nothing substantial has been discovered to fault Dhawan, the commission has suggested that the Anand Ram Commission, which is still investigating the conspiracy charge, keep Dhawan's role in mind.

From one point of view, that is by far the biggest let down. The report has not revealed any conspiracy though it has obliquely suggested that there was one. In fact the judge has recommended that the conspiracy issue be examined separately now by the Anand Ram Commission.

But that is a tricky proposition. Sources in the Union Home Ministry explain the reasons behind the commission's unseemly hurry in rushing through its report and shying away from the issue of the conspiracy in the perspective of the recent conviction of Satwant Singh, Balbir Singh and Kehar Singh for Mrs Gandhi's assassination. This is not the best situation for the prosecution to be in. Any suggestion of a further inquiry into the conspiracy theory will only weaken the prosecution's case when the appeal of the three convicts comes up for hearing before the Delhi High Court. Senior officials connected with the Thakkar Commission say that the defence in the case was likely to seek postponement of the trial till the completion of the commission's inquiry.

Yet the Anand Ram Commission, which is officially incharge of the prosecution case in the assassination trial continues to work on hundreds of other leads brought in by its investigators spread all over the region now. Among the officials there is still a strong feeling-some of it resulting from the evidence collected over the months - that there is a deep-rooted conspiracy waiting to be unearthed. But the Government cannot even talk about it because it will destroy the prosecution case.

To begin with, the commission officials have the initial statement of Bimal Khalsa, Beant Singh's widow, who had clearly mentioned that a number of people (Sikhs) used to frequently hold quiet confabulations with her husband. The commission has only been able to collect vague descriptions of these people, and has also interrogated Sikhs detained on charges of sedition or extremist activity. These include Simranjeet Singh Mann, the dismissed IPS officer now in the Hazaribagh jail. But no evidence has been found. Some of the descriptions, according to sources close to the inquiry, matched Attinder Pal Singh, a student from Bhopal who is now widely believed to be in Pakistan, and Gurinder Pal Singh, an extremist believed to have been killed in a recent encounter with the Punjab police.

Besides, the investigators are still looking for answers to some of the inconsistencies in the evidence brought up before the Thakkar Commission. For example, it is widely believed and has been stated before the commission that Beant Singh had refused to accept the 100-rupee gift Mrs Gandhi made to each of her security men, thereby expressing his resentment. But his widow's first statement says clearly that he had brought the money home though he kept cursing himself for having done so.

That the Government still firmly believes in the existence of a deeper conspiracy is obvious from the fact that even while the Thakkar Commission is more or less in the process of winding up, the Anand Ram team was, till January, seeking more investigating personnel from the state police forces all over the country. Said a Home Ministry official: "Initially they had the dual role of building the prosecution case in the trial and assisting the Thakkar Commission. But now while the inquiry into the conspiracy theory continues, the commission may also become a, kind of permanent agency to keep a watch over the Sikh extremists."

As things stand thus, the Thakkar Commission has raised more questions than it has answered. Besides casting serious doubts on the basic system of VVIP security it has added a whole new dimension to the story by making the veiled suggestion that the assassins could have had backers within the prime minister's inner circle. The indications last week were that the Government was planning to hand the report over to the Anand Ram Commission whose turn it will now be to delve into the hazy and complex dimensions of the second most significant political murder in the history of the country.

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